Links for 2012-09-05

‘ProgreTiiger education will start with students in the first grade, which starts around the age of 7 or 8 for Estonians. The compsci education will continue through a student’s final years of public school, around age 16. Teachers are being trained on the new skills, and private sector IT companies are also getting involved, which makes sense, given that these entities will likely end up being the long-term beneficiaries of a technologically literate populace. The ProgreTiiger program is launching at a few pilot schools and will soon be rolling out to all general education schools in Estonia.’

‘If I were to sum up the past 6 years I’ve spent optimizing JRuby it would be with the following phrase: Get Rid Of Hash Lookups.’ This has been a particular theme of some recent optimization hacks I’ve been working on. Hashes may be O(1) to read, on average, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the right tool for performance… (via Declan McGrath)